Sacrifices
by house3er4ev
Summary: Season 4 SPOILERS. One-shot. Takes place in 4.8. This is basically what I wish happened at the dinner table after Cora announces Rosamund and Edith's sabbatical to Switzerland.


**A/N: This has been stuck in my head since the season 4 finale. I really wished we could have seen everyone's reaction to Edith's situation. This takes place at the dinner table scene in 4.8, when Cora announces Edith and Rosamund's plan to go to Switzerland. Hope you enjoy! **

"Or Is this an incognito search for the missing Mr. Gregson?" Mary smiled at her own clever wit.

"Don't tease her," admonished Tom. "It's much more serious than that."

"Thank you, Tom, but I can defend myself," Edith said with a cold fury in her voice. "Now Mary, I don't ever recall teasing you when Matthew went missing."

"But that different!" scoffed Mary. "Matthew was lost during wartime. Gregson got lost looking at castles in Germany of all places!"

Edith had been trying to reign in her emotions. However, after hearing that comment from Mary, with the combination of the pregnancy hormones that were streaming through her veins, she lost it.

"Damn-it Mary!" exclaimed Edith, slamming down her knife and fork. Everyone looked to her in shock. "I am so tired of you always aging to have some remark on everything I do! I put with so much from you. I make sacrifice after sacrifice so that your future empire can get off on the right foot and all I get as thanks are more headaches from you!"

"Sacrifices?" laughed Mary. "When on earth have you ever made a sacrifice? Unless you are talking about losing Sir Anthony Strallan. I daresay that that wasn't sacrifice but luck."

In her anger, Edith ignored the look that Aunt Rosamund shot her. "I am talking about my child," Edith screamed. With the exception of Rosamund and the Dowager Countess, who had suspected her granddaughter's situation, everyone gasped and their eyes widened.

Now, Edith deflates as tears streamed down her face. "The child," she continued, "that I am giving up so that the Grantham name, a name that I really have lost all interest in, can live without scandal. That is the reason we are going to Switzerland. Now, if you'll excuse me," Edith stood up and slid her chair back before swiftly exiting the room.

—

Child. Cora tried to say the word, but all she could do was mouth it as she sat there, stupefied.

"I better go see if I can calm her down," sighed Rosamund. This certainly wasn't what she expected to happen when she came to Downton. She had thought she had finally come up with a suitable solution to help her niece that she had become so close to over the last few years. The whole point of going to Switzerland was to ensure that no one had to be wiser about Edith's state. She should have known that there is no way to keep a secret for long at Downton and that some one would question them. Perhaps she shouldn't have told Cora the plan right before dinner. Her sister-in-law could never keep her mouth shut.

"No."

Rosamund turned to her mother, surprised. "What do you mean, 'no'? Someone has to go after her."

"I agree, but that someone should be Cora."

"Me?" asked Cora, looking to her mother-in-law, sound finally coming out of her mouth.

"Yes, you," replied Violet, rolling her eyes. "You are her mother, the last time I checked."

"Yes, yes of course," said Cora, shaking her head as she stood up and left the room.

—

Edith leaned against the wall of the house, bent over as she threw up the little dinner she had eaten on the gravel. One she finished, ignoring all of the manners that had been drilled into her from a young age, she wiped her arm across her mouth and tried to breathe deeply.

Behind her, she heard the front door open. Without turning around, she began speaking.

"I am so sorry Aunt Rosamund. Just when you figure everything out, I go and lose my temper, ruining everything. I understand if you don't want to help me anymore, after tonight. I suppose, I'll go to America instead. Start a new life, with a new identity. That way, you could go on living your life."

"Oh, Edith." The voice that spoke was not that of her aunt. Edith quickly turned to see her mother staring at her with tears in her eyes.

"Oh, it's you." Edith turned to look into the dark, vast grounds of the Abbey. "I'll pack my bags tonight and leave first thing tomorrow morning, before you even wake up. I promise."

"Oh my dear, your father and I failed you miserably, haven't we?" cried Cora as she crossed over to where her middle child was standing, and put a hand on her back.

"What?" Edith looked at her mother in shock. That certainly wasn't what she expected her mother to say at all.

"We should have noticed what was happening to you. I knew something was wrong, I just attributed it to Mr. Gregson's disappearance." Edith stared at her mother, unable to comprehend what she was saying. "Your father and I have severely underestimated you. We overlooked you. In our haste to help Mary, we neglected you. Sybil never needed our help and, truthfully, Mary didn't either. We were just so worried about the estate. Somehow, in the process of getting Mary settled both before Matthew and after, we neglected you."

Cora hugged a shocked and crying Edith tightly to her chest. "I am so sorry."

Edith hugged her mother back. She had never expected to hear her mother admit to what she herself had been trying to say for years. In the past, she had always been ignored.

_It's funny how life works, _thought Edith. _Just when I finally accept and even appreciate the independence that my parents have always given me though I never wanted it, mama, at least, now realizes what I have always tried to say._

After a long couple of minutes, Cora asked the question she needed to know. "Why didn't you tell me, Edith?"

Edith pulled back to look her mother. "I tried to, that day in the library, when I asked you if you thought I was bad. Instead of comforting me, as I know your words were intended to do, they only confirmed my fears. You told me that everyone has bad feelings, but acting on those feelings is what made you bad. I acted on my bad feelings."

"Oh Edith, being in love, as you so clearly are, if I am not mistaken, does not make you a bad person. Of course you should have waited until you were married, but it doesn't make you bad. Foolish, perhaps, but not bad."

"Oh, but Mama, I am bad," exclaimed Edith, tears beginning to stream down her face again. She broke away from her mother's embrace and turned away. "There's so much I haven't told you."

Cora look at her with concern in her eyes. "Then tell me. I don't think anything you could say could shock me any further."

"Michael and I could never have been married."

Cora breathed in deeply and asked, "Why not?"

"Because Michael is married. His wife is in an insane asylum. He wasn't in Germany looking at castles. He was there trying to get a divorce."

For a few minutes, Cora was silent trying to digest this information. How could she have misjudged the man Edith was infatuated with so much? Once again, Cora lamented her and Robert's lack of attention towards Edith. They were so eager to finally have her married off that they didn't question why Edith never mentioned marriage with Michael Gregson.

Finally, she came to a decision. "That doesn't matter."

"What do you mean? How can that possibly not matter?" asked Edith.

Cora delicately shrugged her shoulders. "Either way, Gregson is still missing and you are still pregnant. I am sorry dear, but his return doesn't seem very likely. Now we have to figure out what to do about your situation, together."

"Together?" asked Edith, apprehensively.

"Together," confirmed Cora, grabbing her daughter's hand.

For the first time in months, Lady Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham, saw her daughter smile a small, genuine smile.


End file.
